GeekBlog: Win or Lose, Succeed or Fail, Try...

...If you don't try, you can never succeed.
Wayne Gretzky once said:
"you miss 100 of the shots you don't take"
He knew what he was talking about, after all, he was one of the greatest hockey players ever. He left a mark on this world so big that he will be remembered for a hundred years at least.

Yoda is quoted as saying:
"Do or do not, there is no try"
But you know what, Yoda was a fictional backwards talking little green guy. Don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars, and Yoda is as wise as they come, but perhaps he's seeing things a little too black and white. Remember Yoda,

"Only Sith deal in absolutes" -- Obi-wan

Why is Trying so...Trying?

Early last year I was bored one night so I decided to pick up my sketch book, which is usually used for writing, and tried to draw something. This is something that I never really thought I would be particularly good at.

At the time I just wanted to see if I could do it or not. I had just read a post on reddit about drawing only what you see, not what you think you see, and something inside clicked and shifted. I thought I'd give it a try:

House

Not too bad right? I mean I'm not saying I'm amazing at drawing, or even particularly good, but pretty much everyone I have shown this to knows that it's supposed to be Hugh Laurie. It looks mostly like him. The point I am trying to illustrate here, is that trying is easy, trying to try can be hard though.

It is our preconceived notions about ourselves that hold us back from trying new things. In-fact right now, I'm almost positive that everything I've written for this blog thus far is purely contrived shit that lacks any real focus, but dammit I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to keep trying until I find my voice, my niche, my reason. Maybe I'll get better, maybe I wont, and if not, oh well. The worst that will happen is that nobody will read it, or will read it and dislike it. That wont kill me...right?

I think I got better at drawing as I did it some more. I learned to take my time and follow the details more. I did some research on drawing techniques. a few months later I bought some alcohol based markers and I drew this.

Wolvie

Clearly it's Wolverine from the X-men. Inspired by this imgur post.
It turned out really well I think. Still not perfect, but I kinda like mine over the source material. This picture was done with only 5 Markers too.
I was in love with these markers and I was in love with drawing things.

Over the next few days I would draw every second I could spare. I drew and coloured Link. I was very Happy with the results.

Link

Then came Cell and Lion-O and I was on a roll. I drew a few other things, none of them were particularly good but I was creating something every chance I had.
But then it happened. I hit a wall. I stopped drawing and lost all inspiration. I wanted to be able to draw something, but every time I would grab a pencil and start to draw I would not just lose interest, I could only see the futility of attempting to draw.

Cell

Lion-O

I didn't have artists block, I was completely incapable of drawing anything even half as decent as these examples. I tried everything I could think of to get back to that place where everything would flow out of me. Maybe then I would feel like I was good at something, like I had purpose. It felt terrible.

I just couldn't get there, until I realized that I was trying to force creativity. I was trying to create a muse out of thin air. That is an impossible thing to do. I needed to accept that the drawing wasn't what made me happy, it was living in the moment and letting me flow through me.The sentence Happiness is not a fish that you can catch finally made the most sense to me that anything ever has, ever.

We all strive for happiness, and most of the time it slips our grasp. Even worse is when we attempt to force it. When we make ourselves do something that Made us happy last week, and it doesn't make us happy this time, it creates a dissonance, and we believe we are broken. "Why can't I be happy?" we ask ourselves, which, if you have any experience with this sort of thing, you know just makes it harder to break out of the sadness and feeling of worthlessness you experience.

Anybody who has ever battled depression knows how painful it is to hear someone say "cheer up" But the fact of the matter is, that's exactly how I became happy.

Before you grab your pitchforks and torches, let me clarify something. You can't just be happy until you let yourself feel the sadness.

For me at least, I came to the realization that I was battling depression, which is not a fight that I could have ever won. No amount of effort will ever be able to beat depression. It is a force that is greater than anyone. It exists outside of you as an intangible energy that weighs you down like a blanket wrapped around you in a swimming pool, sometimes the ocean.

If I kept trying to fight against it, I would still be held down by that blanket. Don't get me wrong, i still have days where I just want to give up. Life is hard, sometimes seemingly impossible. But the important thing is that we try.

You can't make it on your own. not every time. And even if you feel alone, you're not, trust me, you're not. The trick is to find someone to talk to that wont try to fix you, that wont try to give you a remedy for depression. You need to find someone who will just support you, even if that means just listening to you cry for a couple hours while you babble incoherently about how you can't draw anymore and how that, and that alone means your life is over. (I can't remember the rest)

In times of extreme sadness we need catharsis. defined as: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions, catharsis is what we avoid at all costs when we are depressed. Feeling anything is scary, especially when what you're feeling is the soul crushing sadness that comes from depression. Even just setting some time aside to be able to let it in can be hard. but once you do, you'll start to feel better, and cheering up becomes easy.

I'm not saying that things immediately get better once you sit down and cry, but in my experience, they can start getting better once you do.
I even started drawing again.